Sunday, December 13, 2015

On Single Mothers and Shame

Jeb Bush was recently asked to clarify his
statements on single mothers in his book, “The Restoration of Shame”. In an amazing feat of political acrobatics,
Mr. Bush seemed to both back pedal and double down saying single moms face
challenges in the world we are in today (presumably a world of reduced economic
opportunities stemming from the collapse of the financial system at the tail
end of his brother’s turn as president) that hurt the prospects and limit the
possibilities of young people being able to live lives of meaning and
purpose.

Mr. Bush has it backwards.
Yes, being raised by a single mother reduces opportunity and possibility
but the conditions that are limiting are due to public policy that is
implemented specifically to censure and punish women for being single
mothers. In a New York Times editorial, Charles Blow points out that we spend energy blaming births to
unmarried women ( http://nyti.ms/1IWZ2gL ). I would say we blame unmarried
mothers. The way we treat them is part
of the punishment. Bush laments the
flagging sense of ridicule and shame heaped upon the irresponsible conduct of
unmarried mothers, but in the absence of shame and ridicule, what we have is
the punishment of seeing one’s children struggle in penurious circumstances and
reduced opportunities, all due to their mothers’ “poor choices”. Meanwhile, our society, our culture, makes
unintended pregnancies and births inevitable by limiting education about
reproductive health and even more so, limiting access to reproductive health
services – especially for poor young women whose future offspring will be most
impacted by the reduced circumstances and opportunities.

We are in a tenuous cultural space where feminism and the
sexual revolution have ruptured the former modified chattel model of marriage
where women traded their reproductive capabilities and caregiving services for
economic security for themselves and their children. Women are no longer ostensibly tied to the
father of their children, dependent on them for economic security, yet the
organization of our society is such that women, especially mothers, are
severely disadvantaged in the workplace, degrading the material well-being of
their children and even more so the mental and emotional well-being of their
family given the emotional stress of poverty. We have organized ourselves as a society in the worst
possible way to support children and families.
We have the dual sides of the pincers crushing families with free market
capitalist economic theory that pushes the cost of labor down to the lowest
point the market can bear; and women will accept less because .72 on the dollar
is better than .00. At the same time,
the free movement of capital to places with a lower cost of labor makes the
competition for jobs fierce for men and women, but due to the rupture of
chattel marriage many men no longer feel obligated to support their families
and women no longer feel compelled to remain with men who abuse drugs and alcohol
and are violent toward them and their children.
In Jeb Bush’s world, shame and ridicule would keep women locked in
marriage and keep men feeling responsible for supporting their families.

What he and others fail to see is the interlocking vice grip of the
free market capitalism that forced women into the workplace by gutting middle
class opportunities gained by organized labor coupled with the freedom of women to flee
unsafe or unsatisfying marriages. Thanks
to the global economy, men are no longer able to hold up their end of the
chattel marriage negotiation and require a partner's income. Ergo,
conservatives are in a pickle because on one hand, they want the cost of labor
to continue to decline, but the decline in wages makes the “traditional”
marriage arrangement untenable.

In our attempts to sustain traditional marriage, we make these macro policy decisions that punish some women
for unwanted pregnancies and their subsequent children are punished along with
them. I am certain that fathers and men
are punished as well for the “poor decisions” by being estranged from their
offspring and missing out on the edifying work of parenting and building a
family – but I was a single mother not an estranged father, so I can speak more
authentically on my reality. We do make
poor personal choices, but given the circumstances, the options we choose from are
limited and equally bad. The greater sin
is the choice we make as a society as we evolve from organizing our families
in one way to another.

We can recognize that we are liberated from an arrangement
based on women trading their caregiving for security. That was never fool proof and many women and
children were left the poorer for it, my own mother and grandmother
included. We should embrace that we are
no longer subject to such an arbitrary and insecure arrangement. We should embrace policies that recognize
families, irrespective of their make-up, as the foundation of our culture,
society and in this free-market capitalist democracy families are also the
foundation of our economy. A strong
family is the foundation of a strong economy, therefore, public policy should
support and strengthen families.

Seeing my friends with kids, I know that raising kids is the
time when the stress of all the familial responsibilities can become too much
to bear, leading to all sorts of ills; an increase in drug and alcohol use, abuse, violence, fractured relationships, anger, resentment or
simply alienation. These in turn can lead to
divorce and to single motherhood – the scourge of modern society, according to Mr. Bush.

The lack of access to reproductive health services also
contributes to unstable families.
Unplanned pregnancies can create families where there is no foundational
commitment between the parents. Access to free, long term birth control without
the slut shaming would reduce unplanned pregnancies and probably
abortions. But it would also take away
conservatives’ most potent tool in controlling women’s sexuality. Without the threat of an unplanned birth,
women will be free to have sex with whomever they choose. That’s the other side of the conservative
vise grip – cost of labor on one side and the conservative, religious social
mores on the other that fears women’s sexual liberation and freedom.

What Mr. Bush displays with his comments underscores the basic misogyny in our commonweal. Women's sexuality should be controlled and managed, women's reproductive rights should be controlled and managed and economically empowered women are more difficult to control and manage.